The Artist Herself
Broadening Ideas of Self-Portraiture in Canada
7‐9 May, 2015
Queen’s University, Kingston
In honour of the 40th anniversary of From Women’s Eyes: Women Painters in Canada, the next conference of the Canadian Women Artist’s History Initiative will be co‐hosted in Kingston, Ontario, by Queen’s University and the Agnes Etherington Art Centre. Coinciding with the exhibition The Artist Herself, the conference invites participants to reconsider ideas around women’s self‐ portraiture and, more particularly, to broaden our understandings of what ‘counts’ as self-‐representation.
Subjectivity and identity have long been central concerns for feminist art history and theory. How does this scholarship enable us to rethink the boundaries of portraiture and the self? Papers are solicited that consider the category of women’s self-‐representation through the wider frames of community, environment, and experience. How do objects reveal their creators? And can posthumanist and materialist challenges to decenter the subject be productively united with our understandings of the work of self-‐portraiture and autobiography? Analyses of women’s creative productions across all visual media are welcome, from scholars, curators, archivists and conservators. In keeping with the historical mandate of CWAHI, the conference will focus on the period prior to 1967. We also invite submissions that reflect on and carry forward the project of Dorothy Farr and Natalie Luckyj’s groundbreaking 1975 exhibition.
Please email a 150-word abstract as well as a 2‐page cv to alicia.boutilier@queensu.ca and cwahi.conference@gmail.com before 15 May 2014. Graduate students should also forward a letter of support from their supervisor. Selections will be made by 15 July 2014.
Any inquiries may be directed to Dr. Kristina Huneault, Department of Art History, Concordia University kristina.huneault@concordia.ca 514 848-‐2424, ext. 4697.